PEOPLE OF THE BOOK | redclaydiary.com

BOOK PEOPLE, PEOPLE BOOKS

Closing Time falls on the City and creeps into the haunted bookshop.

As the Security Guard at Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories, I roam the aisles

and crannies now and then, looking high and low for books in need of attention.

Just under a high ledge, near the large poster of Martin Luther King Jr., a copy of

Up From Slavery slants too much—if you leave it in that position for long, you’ll

get a warped sense of history—so I straighten it.

Across from Dr. King, on a high shelf, Sir Walter Scott lolls about, his volumes

fairly bursting at the seams with conflict, violence, passion and mystery. He stays
high up because his leather bindings are fragile.

A few feet away from Dr. King and Sir Walter grins Fannie Flagg, just waiting

to be howled at, her stories of too-real people too funny to believe—unless you

live Down Here. Wonder if she’s kin to the Sweet Potato Queen? The Queen’s

poster and books are on the far side of the store, as are the Far Side books.

Three books in the Alabama section have been rudely displaced, their spines

turned toward the backs of the shelves, making it annoying to have to turn them

outward to see their titles. I just sigh and become the Lone Rearranger.

I move Judith Krantz out of the Philosophy section, where someone has

abandoned her, and I make sure Philosophy is visible before the customer

can locate the nearby Equestrian section. (I always put Descartes before the horse.)

The old Life Magazines with cover photos sporting the faces of Marilyn Monroe

and Charles Manson and Winston Churchill and Tony Curtis are re-stacked neatly

so that I at least can find them again.

The Mystery-Thriller shelves are author-alphabetized these days, broken only by

a section devoted to Bondage (books and other material related to James Bond).

Louisa Mae Alcott and Anais Nin are kept separate, as are the Hardy Boys and

Dracula, Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx, Daffy Duck and Jerry Lewis. What

could go wrong if they all partied when I’m not around?

Anyhow, I, the Security Guard, do a little dusting, shelve a few more orphans,

pack something up to take home and read, dampen the 40 lights, secure the

door, and head for my own little literary nest, giving the enormous variety of

personalities and doctrines and misspent lives and productive thoughts and

humorous outlooks a chance to breathe on their own, for at least a series

of moments in time